Gala Welcome Dinner

Gala Welcome Dinner & Book Signing

Enjoy the beauty of Belmont’s stunning parlors and porches as well as the company of our stellar lineup of authors, artists, and chefs. Have them sign your books while enjoying great music, terrific hors d’oeuvres, and specialty cocktails (as well as a full bar, of course).

Next, sit down to a three-course plated Delta Harvest dinner beneath a tent on Belmont’s gorgeous grounds. This year, our team of star chefs includes: the Delta’s own Cole Ellis of Delta Meat Market fame; James Beard Award winners Rebecca Wilcomb and Ryan Prewitt of Herbsaint and Peche in New Orleans; plus many more surprises! Settle in for a brief live auction, after-dinner dancing, a late-night cigar bar, and lots of Delta-style fun.

Location

Learn more about the circa 1857 Belmont, one of the few antebellum houses remaining in Washington County here: Visit Belmont Plantation

2017 Celebrity Chef and Author Line-Up

John Alexander, a painter and native of Beaumont, TX, has made his home in Manhattan and Amagansett, NY since the late 1970s. He has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and around the world. In 2007, a major retrospective of his work opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. His drawings and paintings reside in the permanent collections of institutions including: the Dallas Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, as well as in many other distinguished public and private collections worldwide. His books include John Alexander: A Retrospective; One World, Two Artists: John Alexander and Walter Anderson; and Human/Nature, The Ridiculous and Sublime: Recent Works by John Alexander.

Hugh Balthrop is founder and creative director of Sweet Magnolia Gelato Co., based in Clarksdale, MS. A former art gallery owner in Washington, DC, he followed “the love of his life” to the Delta in 2000 and started making ice cream for family and friends. After attending a course in ice cream-making at Penn State and studying under a gelato master, he launched Sweet Magnolia, putting a Southern twist on traditional Italian techniques and using locally sourced ingredients, including Mississippi grass grazed milk and cream, honey, sorghum, pecans, eggs, blueberries, and pound cake. Sweet Magnolia Gelato is available in more than 100 retail locations across the South and bears the tagline “Created by us, inspired by y’all.”Jennifer Hill Booker wears many hats in the culinary world. She is a Le Cordon Bleu-certified chef, the author of two cookbooks (Field Peas to Foie Gras: Southern Recipes with a French Accent and Dinner Déjà Vu: Southern Tonight, French Tomorrow), the owner of a culinary company called Your Resident Gourmet, founder of Southern Divas of the New South™ Dinner Series, and member of the James Beard Foundation Food Waste Advisory Council. A native of Georgia, she spent her summers and holidays in Charleston, MS with her maternal grandmother. Her mother, Laverne Scurlock Hill, is currently a teacher in Webb, MS. Booker combines her love of traditional Southern cuisine with her belief in incorporating healthy, seasonal foods and her classic French training to create a unique style of cooking she calls “Modern Southern Healthy Cuisine with a French Accent.”

Hodding Carter III was raised in Greenville and spent 18 years as a reporter and editor at the Delta Democrat-Times, his family’s Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper. During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, he served as Asst. Secretary of State for Public Affairs and as the State Department’s chief spokesman, most notably during the Iran hostage crisis. He went on to become a TV commentator and contributor to several newspapers and served as a correspondent for the PBS Frontline documentary series. He is a four-time Emmy winner and recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for broadcast journalism. Currently, he is University Professor of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

William Dunlap, artist and writer, is a Mississippi native who now resides in McLean, VA and Coral Gables, FL. Dunlap’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Mississippi Museum of Art, and United States embassies throughout the world. Dunlap is also a noted curator, lecturer, and journalist who has contributed to many national magazines and books, including his own Dunlap, an overview of his work. His latest book, Short Mean Fiction, Words and Pictures, was published in April 2016.

Patrick Dunne is the proprietor of Lucullus, the legendary culinary antiques in New Orleans. He has written extensively on style and taste for numerous publications and is the author of The Epicurean Collector.

Cole Elliswas born and raised in Cleveland, Mississippi, where he owns Delta Meat Market. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of Charleston, he worked at a series of Charleston’s top restaurants, including the Hominy Grill and Magnolia’s. Before returning home in 2013 to start his market, restaurant, and catering business, Ellis served as chef de cuisine at Nashville’s famed Hermitage Hotel for seven years.

Ke Francisis a narrative artist who has been actively producing artwork for more than forty years. He and his wife Mary live in Tupelo, MS and are the co-owners of HOOPSNAKE PRESS, a fine art press that publishes artist books and prints. His book works, paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures are in over thirty major public and private international collections including: The Getty Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, the High Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Ginsburg Collection in Johannesburg, South Africa among many others. He has had more than fifty one-person and two-person exhibits. Most recently, Mr. Francis had a one person exhibit at the Orlando Museum of fine Art in January of 2011.

Jason Goodenough was born in Atlanta but spent his childhood between Manhattan and London. After graduating from Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, he earned a degree from the Culinary Institute of America. Chef Goodenough has since worked with legendary Philadelphia chef Georges Perrier and Iron Chef Morimoto and did a stint as a private chef in South Dakota while also working in leading New Orleans restaurant kitchens. In 2014 he opened the critically acclaimed Carrollton Market in Uptown New Orleans. Its most recent accolade was the awarding of four beans, the highest rating from Times-Picayune food critic Brett Anderson.

Jessica Harris is a professor of English at Queens College in New York and the founder of the Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures at Dillard Universtiy in New Orleans, where she lives part time. A noted author and culinary historian, she is an expert on African and Caribbean cuisines. She is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and a member of the Board of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. She also has been inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s prestigious Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. Her books include Iron Pots and Wooden Spoons: Africa’s Gifts to New World Cooking and High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. Her latest book, My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir, was published in May and recalls a lost era—the vibrant New York City of her youth, where her social circle included Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and other members of the Black intelligentsia.

Mason Hereford is the owner of the wildly popular Turkey and the Wolf, the New Orleans sandwich shop that was chosen best new restaurant of 2017 by Bon Appetit magazine. Prior to opening his restaurant last year, he was chef-de-cuisine at the critically acclaimed Coquette, also in New Orleans, for six years. Hereford was born and raised in Charlottesville, VA and moved to New Orleans in 2008.

Lisa Howorthis the author of the critically acclaimed Flying Shoes, a novel based on tragic events in the author’s own life, published in 2014. She and her husband Richard Howorth own the iconic Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, which they opened in 1979 and which is well-known for hosting Southern writers including Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, Willie Morris, Richard Ford, John Grisham and many others. Howorth was awarded the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1996 and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in 2007. She has written for Garden and Gunmagazine and the Oxford American.​Billy Jonesis Chef de Cuisine at Cochon in New Orleans, LA, the James Beard Award-winning restaurant that is part of the Link Restaurant Group. He was also the 2016 winner of the Delta Hot Tamale Festival in the Celebrity Chef category.

Thomas Oliphant is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and Washington columnist for The Boston Globe. A regular commentator on PBS NewsHour, he is the author of four books, including his latest, co-authored with Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign, published in May. Al Franken says “Oliphant brings more to the table than anyone I know.” Madeline Albright called him “the Will Rogers of our times.” Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that his book Praying for Gil Hodges was a “small masterpiece.”Ryan Prewitt, a Memphis native, is executive chef and part owner of Peche, the latest star in New Orleans’s Link Restaurant Group. Prewitt won the 2014 James Beard Award for Best Chef in the South and Peche won for Best New Restaurant in the country.

Julia Reed, a native Greenvillian, is a columnist for Garden & Gun. She is the author of six books including Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena and But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria, Adventures in Eating, Drinking, and Making Merry. Her latest, Julia Reed’s South, Spirited Entertaining and High Style Fun All Year Round, was published by Rizzoli in May 2016.

Rebecca Wilcomb is the chef de cuisine at Herbsaint restaurant in New Orleans and the 2016 James Beard Award Winner for Best Chef South. She was also the 2015 winner of the Delta Hot Tamale Festival in the Celebrity Chef category.

Curtis Wilkie was born in Greenville and graduated from the University of Mississippi. He began his career at the Clarksdale Press Register and served as a national and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe from 1975 to 2000. Since 2002, he has been a professor at the University of Mississippi, where he is a Fellow of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics. Wilkie’s books include The Fall of the House of Zeus and Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians, and Other Persons of Interest, a collection of dispatches and feature stories from throughout his career. His most recent book, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year Campaign was co-authored with Thomas Oliphant and published by Simon & Schuster in May.

​ Be sure and check back in on the line-up as we will be adding more exciting participants in the coming weeks!

2016 Gala Welcome Dinner Gallery

2015 Gala Welcome Dinner Gallery

Office Location

Main Street Greenville503 Washington AvenueGreenville, MS 38701

About Our Organization

Main Street Greenville is a subsidiary of The Greater Greenville Development Foundation, Inc. which was developed exclusively for charitable, educational, scientific, and literary purposes. The purpose of the organization is to promote events and issues which are relevant to the quality of life for the residents of Greenville, Washington County, the Mississippi Delta and the State of Mississippi, including but not limited to, economic planning and development, education, housing and cultural development.